


The Empty Film Canisters

by norabelle



Category: Doctor Who, Eurovision Song Contest RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:48:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24768772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norabelle/pseuds/norabelle
Summary: You can't watch the 1964 Eurovision Song Contest. Why?You should probably ask The Doctor..
Kudos: 7





	The Empty Film Canisters

**Author's Note:**

> Content notice: Bill experiences a racist incident whilst out and about in the 1960s.

"Oh, so it's a singing competition is it?" said The Doctor, theatrically throwing the series of blue-handled switches on the TARDIS console.

Bill scrunched up her face in appraisal. "Yeah. But it's a SONG contest, it's about the song really," she said airly, falling off as she continued "and the costumes, and the staging. And the pyro." 

"Pyro? Pyroviles would certainly pep up a singing competition - does this mean they have to have it next to a volcano?" He sprang up to the bookshelves around the edge of the console room and pulled out a roller-mounted world map with a well judged flourish. The apparently aged cloth map burst into life with little glowing red dots indicating the locations of active volcanoes. 

Bill cocked her head to one side and "I like it, but I don't see the relevance. No, you don't need an active volcano to host the Eurovision Song Contest. You just do it in, like a theatre or a concert hall."

The Doctor returned to the light of the central console. "A theatre or a concert hall. I am familiar with the concept." The glowing orange heartbeat of the time rotor illuminated his wild silver hair, while the sound of silence built up around them.

"And there's one that I've never seen. That no-one's seen since it happened. They somehow lost  _ all _ the tapes, like they do, and so you just can't watch Eurovision 1964. And seeing as we're not doing anything tonight, I thought we might go along," said Bill, wondering if the combination of a direct request and a minor mystery might be faster than trying to get the Doctor interested in the ins and outs of douze points, countbacks and Marcel Bezencon's vision for a Europe united by light entertainment. 

"Will I be required to change out of my hoodie?" the Doctor asks, looking skeptical. 

Bill is already leaving for the Tardis wardrobe. "Yes! Opera dress please, Professor, I'm sure you can manage it."

* * *

  
  


They land in a distant backstage corridor of the Tivolis Konsertsal in beautiful Copenhagen. Bill had picked out an Emilio Pucci maxi dress, in riotous swirls of pink and mint, and it swished and pooled around her ankles as she helped the Doctor chuck a discreet dust sheet over the Tardis. She wasn’t sure this was entirely necessary. She felt like the Tardis almost drew shadows around itself, making itself seem less remarkable.

"So, if anyone asks," said Bill, as they moved swiftly and purposefully in the direction of the main hall,"we tell everyone we're independent scrutineers. Or guests of the Grand Duke. It doesn't matter which one, someone'll be a Grand Duke round here." She stuck her head around a corner, expecting someone to ask unwelcome questions at every turn.

"I was planning on just getting through on psychic paper and my natural charisma," said the Doctor.

"Whatever you say, Prof," smiled Bill.

An exasperated looking uniformed usher caught up with them about ten metres from the door into the theatre. 

“Sir! Sir! You came into this corridor from an unauthorised area!”

The Doctor slid on the sonic sunglasses and said, “An unauthorised area? My good man, we need to talk about the inadequacy of your signage,” clearly preparing to sonic something, then psychic paper him.

Feeling pretty sure that no good was going to come from her presence in that conversation, Bill ducked into the powder room across the corridor. A woman in a stiff pastel gown trimmed with marabou was re-settling a very small hat onto her crisp, elaborate hairdo in front of a mirror. Bill saw her expression flash through surprise into annoyance. The familiar sting of vintage prejudice and retro assumptions. 

A second woman with an enormous stiff-set blonde helmet of hair swished out of the loos, and barked at Bill.

“There are no fresh hand towels here and the event hasn’t even started. What happened to the standards at the Tivoli?”

Bill sighed. Ah, a Category 3 historical racist incident. Great. She took a deep breath and held onto her dignity.

“Madam. With the greatest of respect, I’m dressed up in full-length Pucci couture, and I’m in here using the ladies just like you. What about me makes you think I’m responsible for hand towels?”

“It’s last season’s Pucci,” she sniffed. 

“Oh, is that right,” said Bill. The effort not to roll her eyes was overwhelming.

The marabou-trimmed woman had frozen in the act of settling the hat, and was making frantic ‘STOP STOP, DESIST, EMBARRASSING expressions at her friend. The moment of tension built.

“Perhaps I will go and make an enquiry elsewhere,” the blonde woman hissed.

The two women swept out of the powder room, engaged in high volume conversation. 

Bill leaned back against the wall and let out the breath she’d been holding. Then she noticed a shiny something on the counter. Jackpot! The blonde woman had left her gloves and her thick, gold-embossed ticket in the powder room! Too busy being a racist cow to keep track of her stuff. Bill smoothly helped herself, grimly muttering "I'm going to need this more than you, Karen."

* * *

The Doctor fidgeted in the next seat with a program that he'd somehow acquired and a pair of opera glasses Bill had to assume lived in his transdimensional pockets. "So what happens now? Will there really be pyroviles? Will the singers be armed? Is the audience armed?"

"That translation circuit really improves an old Eurovision, Doctor! I’m going to be able to understand all the songs without looking them up." Although Bill could definitely hear the old Portuguese lady two rows away saying some really anatomical things about Matt Monro, which wasn't necessarily helping the vibe.

But then the orchestra struck up the Te Deum and everything else melted away. An hour passes, in soft focus chanson bliss. 

* * *

"Bill. I need you to stop watching the show," whispered the Doctor in the middle of the Portuguese song. 

"No, Doctor! It's Italy next and that's like the most winning Eurovision song ever! We can't!" 

"It's very serious and we've been staring it in the face the whole time. We have to leave right now." The Doctor takes her white-gloved hand and rises to his feet. Bill rolls her eyes but goes along. They duck out of the auditorium, glared at by the ushers, and hissed at by bejewelled women.

In the safety of the corridor the Doctor spells it out. "There is a Weeping Angel on that stage, right next to the orchestra, right in everyone’s eyeline. It is being held, fixed in place by the attention of the audience. If the audience keep staring at it, they'll all end up with tiny angels forming in their brains, and then this city will be overrun by horrific ancient quantum-locked beasts that timejump you to death. And that's bad, even for Copenhagen." 

Bill knows that action comes next. "What do we do? We can't just barge on stage and say 'EXCUSE ME I NEED TO MOVE THIS ALIEN SUPERBEING' while they're in the middle of Non Ho L'Eta."

"I'm going to create.... a distraction" said the Doctor, thoughtfully picking up a piece of plywood from the backstage store. "What year is it? 1964?"

"Yep. March 21st 1964." Bill thought about the point in time they found themselves at. Still two years from the first black singer at the contest. Still four months from the US Civil Rights Act. In just over six months from now, the UK would have an election campaign so toxically, explicitly racist that Malcom X would end up visiting Smethwick in solidarity, days before he died. 

"So what I need you to do, Bill, is take the screwdriver and give the angel a good blast to persuade it to move on to somewhere it’ll be less problematic. But only once all the crowd and the cameras are looking away from it. Any earlier and we risk a massive psychic energy discharge. Which would be bad. Got it?"

The opening bars of the Swiss entry floated through the wings. "This is it then?" said Bill. "We ready?"

* * *

And there’s always the aftermath.

Bill found The Doctor in a heap backstage, somehow still bearing his placard despite receiving a good showbusiness kicking after his stage invasion. BOYCOTT FRANCO AND SALAZAR, it said, in heavy black letters. 

"What are you like, Doctor?" grinned Bill. 

"Never cruel, and never cowardly. But always anti-fascist."

The grandiosity of that fully deserved the eye-roll it got. "Let's get out of here," said Bill. "I know who wins anyway."

Back in the Tardis, something occurs to Bill. She says, "You remember this was all being filmed, right? Are you not worried about all those people watching it on the telly getting all angelled up too?"

The Doctor clenched and unclenched his fists. The work was never done. Damn television. Always watching. 

He'd have to go round all the mouldering film stores of TV stations around Europe, deleting any trace of their adventure. Empty the video cans, turn the tape to dessicated, vinegary powder and erase the records. It's vitally important that no-one ever gets hold of the film of Eurovision 1964.

  
  



End file.
